Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Voicemail

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A very nice surgical physician’s assistant grabbed the couple of cysts I had mentioned. Easy peasy. He mostly shaved my chest and numbed me up with a quick acting, long lasting ‘caine-based anesthetic. Made a couple of cuts. Popped the cyst sacs out intact. Dug around in the bigger one to pull out all the scar tissue and cauterized the grave. Pulled the tissue together so there wouldn’t be too much depression. And did two layers of stitches. There are about 15 stitches all together.

The whole procedure was absolutely painless. And the dermatology practice will bill for just one procedure including the initial consultation, the excision, and even the return visit to remove the 27 miles of stitches. As an aside, people who can tie stitches awe me. I’m good with fine handwork. I can tie up a dinghy or a destroyer. I have no trouble with a reef knot. I have never mastered the surgeon’s knot in 4-0 silk.

They will also send the cysts themselves in for lab analysis. That will cost extra.

The phone call with the results won’t cost extra but it may not be painless.

When Nurse Nancy said she would call me, I reiterated that she could leave a detailed message on my voicemail. See, I know that Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requires privacy so you have to fill out a form in quintuplicate and seal it with the blood of a goat to allow a doc to leave you a message.

I had already given them the blood of the goat.

“Well, maybe I can,” she said.

Errr?

“Does your message identify you?”

Of course it does but apparently some people don’t.

“Lots of people leave the wrong number. Sometimes I don’t dial correctly. If I can’t tell for sure it is your voicemail, I can’t leave the message,” she said.

Geico called my cellphone and left a message for [name deleted] that their insurance wasn’t bound yet because they had not supplied enough information.

I don’t know if the poor schlub gave them the wrong number or if the Geico rep misdialed but not even my “Hi this is Dick Harper. Don’t leave a message and particularly don’t leave one for [name deleted]” outgoing message deterred them.

People.Just.Don’t.Listen.

Then there is the famed, federal Telemarketers’ Sourcebook (the FCC calls it the “Do Not Call” registry but we know they’re “here to help”). The first phone call in history happened on a nippy March day in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell rang up Mr. Watson. “Come here. I want to see you,” he said. The second phone call in history happened later that chilly when a telemarketer called for “Mr. Fell” and offered to sell a genuine medicinal oil. The third phone call in history happened when Mr. Bell asked the Feds for help.

128 years later, a law made it illegal for telemarketers to call people on their list. Uh huh.

I get a lot of calls from “Consumer Svcs,” and “extended warranty” robocallers, and “Skycare,” and more. One enterprising phisherman even “spoofed” Swanton Lumber’s number. I do a fair amount of business with Swanton Lumber, so I answered that one. Snake oil.

The law doesn’t deter them. They just keep calling.

My outgoing voicemail message doesn’t deter them. They just keep calling.

My stadium air horn hasn’t deterred them. They just hire another, not-yet deaf, crook and just keep calling.

There are a number of hinky solutions such as anonymous call rejection, priority rings, and complete call blocking from your phone company to smart phone apps that do the same. My cordless phone has call block built in. All I do is scroll back through the Caller ID screen, select the offender, and save that number to the blocked list. Most amazing of all is that the phone turns off the call to my entire system so all the phones in the house stop ringing. I have no idea how that works. Black magic, I’m thinking.

People.Just.Don’t.Listen. but thanks to my phone’s extraordinary “Call Block” feature, I don’t have to listen either.

 

Tool Guy

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Over the years I’ve built cars and houses and boats and batteries and computers and …

OK, you get the idea.

Over the years I’ve collected a lot of tools. A couple of them would go home at the end of the day but most went back in the toolbox or chest where they belong.

Over this summer I’ve had a little plumbing project.

Advertising Image of Bosch Power ToolsStop it, Harper! This isn’t the Story of O. This is the story of Dick the Tool Guy.

My great grandfather Barnard the farmer-engineer built cooling tunnels and had a small-gauge steam train on tracks in the front yard. He had tools. My grandfather Harper the station master built a wood shop in the baggage room of his station where he made lovely cabinets. He had more tools. My dad rebuilt most of our boat from that wood shop but he later moved it to our chicken coop where he made exquisite tables and more. This Vermont house has a nice 19th Century barn that I converted to my shop when we moved here.

I inherited and kept some of the tools my dad inherited. I inherited and kept all of his tools. And I’ve managed to buy one or two of my own.

Oddly, my dad and I shared most of the same tool preferences although he was a southpaw and always a Ford guy and I’m not. Still, you can’t tell the difference between his hand tools and mine. And I didn’t like my grandfather Harper’s hand tools but I did keep his Shopsmith.

I started the real assemblage when I started building race cars. In fact, the bed of my 22-foot long, green 1973 Chevy crew cab was more workshop than anything for the years we used it to haul race cars. The centerpiece of that was a stacked mechanic’s roller cabinet. The truck is long gone but I still have the tool box and now I’ve mostly duplicated them with my dad’s. (I got out of racing when it became apparent I’d need an 18-wheeler instead of a pickup).

Power tools are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.

My dad was also a table saw guy. I lurve my radial arm. Now I have three table saws, the Shopsmith, and, natch, a good 12″ radial arm saw. Each one has its strong points although I find myself using one of the table saws more than the radial because I can put it on the jobsite while the radial sits in the barn.

Speaking of power saws, I somehow ended up with four circular saws; I bought one in 1975 and another a quarter century later. And two industrial Sawzalls. And three jigsaws which he always called “saber saws.” My dad was also a bandsaw guy. He had one that now lives in the very back of my hut, the outdoor cinderblock storeroom in South Puffin. He used it a lot but in all of my projects, I’ve never had enough reason to drag it out; it always seemed easier to cut that curve with a jigsaw. I bought a bandsaw on a super sale 20 years ago. I’m almost embarrassed to admit I’ve never set it up.

I have three air compressors but only one pneumatic framing nailer. And one air hammer. A straight line air sander. A rotary air sander. Two impact wrenches, though, one air and one electric.

Other than the bandsaw, all of my own tools have arrived in response to a job: working on cars, building a boat or a cabinet in the barn, modeling a robot, building a bunch of float chargers.

The plumbing project also turned into a wiring project. The hole I had to dig in the kitchen floor stumped me, though. The original floor boards laid in 1855 or so were not quite as smooth as we expect for modern kitchen needs such as vinyl or cork or laminate or tile. The design isn’t conducive to using a (rented) floor sander and I knew I’d get wavy results (and a mess) with the big 9″ disc grinder or my belt sander and I’m way too lazy to use a jack plane on the whole bloody floor.

Ah ha!

What a perfect opportunity to buy a 3-1/4″ power planer. I’ve resisted that particular impulse in the past, simply because I didn’t need it. Until now. It did just what I needed and now I have another power tool.

Recently, I’ve been thinking I should have an oscillating multifunction power tool, too. And I really want a milling machine…

Heh.

 

In the Cloud(s)

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I spent an entire day, on and off, obsessing over Internoodle storage. I still don’t have a good answer.

The issue isn’t (quite) what’s out there. Everybody seems to sell cloud storage today. Except me.

Cloud Storage My real question is which cloud storage companies have the couple of important pieces like file versioning and file locking.
File Versioning: A computer file system which allows your files to exist in several versions at the same time. Most common versioning file systems keep a number of old copies of the file which is exactly what I want.
File Locking: A way to restrict access to your file by allowing only one user or process to work on and save it at any given time. If you open this post in your word processor and correct the spelling, you definitely don’t want me to come along, open it, and move the paragraphs around which would wipe out your work. Or vice versa.

Most (not all) of the vendors seem to let multiple computers and other devices sync to the same account.

Most (not all) of the vendors won’t protect you from having the same file open in two places at the same time, even for me alone.

I called a couple of vendors.

You are now chatting with “Noah” at GoDaddy:
Noah –
Thank you for contacting Sales Chat. My name is Noah. Who am I speaking to today?

Me –
Hi Noah. I’m Dick. I’m an ordinary geek. I have 4 or 5 Windows computers I need to sync, plus a couple of smartphones and a couple of tablets. I absolutely need to lock open files. I have under 100GB of files.

Can I do that on GoDaddy?

Noah –
sure! if you are just looking to get an online storage that you can access files online that you can access from anywhere. What types of files are you trying to share?
Me –
I’m trying to open files on, say, this laptop and then open them on the one in the next room, much as I would if collaborating in an office. This is everything from Word .docs and Lotus spreadsheets (Lotus, not Excel) to photo RAW files

Noah –
so with the online storage option you would be able to upload all those file types to the storage however you would have to download each thing to be able to make edits/modifications, and then re upload for them for collaboration.

Me –
Don’t the files automatically sync with your storage once I’ve uploaded them?

Noah –
hmm. lets me take a look at that portion of it.

Noah –
ahh okay sorry I thought at first you were talking about online collaboration where you can update it online and it will right away update online. This can be setup to sync between multiple computers so you have all the files that you need online accessible to all pc and macs. It does not do tablet or smart phone syncing.

Me –
Good. Will it lock a file I may have open on PC #1 so I can’t change it at the same time on PC#2?

Noah –
Yeah it wont do that. honestly this is kind a old product of ours that is starting to phase out. Its not even on the main website anymore so I don’t know how you found the page. I would recommend looking at something like Microsofts Onedrive as its much cheaper and has a lot more features to it.

Huh. Starting to phase out. Worrisome.

Noah’s comments were oddly refreshing except the GoDaddy online storage Online Storage “WORKSPACE” page looks pretty current. “Store your files in the cloud! Access documents, photos, video, and more — anytime, anywhere.”

I also spoke to “Margie S” at Microsoft. I’ve shortened that conversation. A lot.

Me –
I’m an ordinary geek. I have 4 or 5 Windows computers I need to sync, plus a couple of smartphones and a couple of tablets. I absolutely need to lock open files.

Can I do that with a OneDrive account or do I need a Business account?

Do I have to do all work in a browser or can I use local apps and Windows Explorer to manage files?

Now, what if I decide to include *all* my photo files, about 1TB and growing?

Thanks.

Margie S –
Thank you for sharing your concern Dick. I am more than happy to assist you.

May I have your email address tied up to your Microsoft account.

And a good contact number in case we’re disconnected I can call you back.

…

Margie S –
Dick regarding to your question you need our Office 365. Because Office 365 Home can be installed to 5 PCs or Macs, plus 5 iPads or Windows tablets. It also has the applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, One Note, Access and Publisher. Another feature that you can take advantage of is our Skype world minutes where you have 60 minutes of Skype calls each month.

Me –
I’m not an Office user. I have locally licensed Word. I use Lotus. I have Corel products including both CorelDraw and WordPerfect. All I want is file storage, syncing, sharing and access.

Margie S –
I understand you Dick, in this case you can only purchase Onedrive

…

Me –
Cool! Last question. Really. I still have an XP computer. Can I use it with OneDrive or OneDrive Business?

Margie S –
Yes Dick.

I tested a OneDrive personal account here using two Windows 7 computers and a Windows XP box. The OneDrive app would not even install on the Windows XP system. And I opened an Excel spreadsheet on this laptop, then opened it on the other computer. Did the same with a WordPerfect document. I worked on and saved each with no file lock or versioning apparent.

Bottom line, OneDrive failed all three tests.

I simply don’t know that the reps know any more than I do.

Prices are all over the map.

Amazon Cloud Drive costs $50/year for 100GB, $500/year for 1TB.

Dropbox slashed their price to $9.99/month for 1TB and has multi-computer sync.

GoDaddy charges $4.99/month for 100GB and also has multi-computer sync.

Google also “slashed the price of its cloud service by as much as 80%” so 100GB is $1.99/month and 1TB plummeted from $49.99 to $9.99. Google Cloud Storage pricing is based on a flat rate for storage plus a usage rate for network access which is akin to paying for “message units” for your local phone calls which I find abhorrent.

Houston-based MediaFire offers $2.50/month for 1TB, “promotional pricing.” It is “developing applications” for iOS and Android. Their free 50GB is ad-supported. MediaFire calls AWS “cost prohibitive” and a potential security and privacy risk.

Microsoft’s new personal monthly prices are $1.99/100GB (previously $7.49) and $3.99/200 GB (previously $11.49). OneDrive for Business has 1TB for $2.50/user/month with annual commitment (down for now from $5/user/month) with additional storage costing more.

Surprisingly Microsoft’s $30/year for a terabyte is way below anyone else. Sadly, OneDrive now works only on Windows 7 and Windows 8.x; when Microsoft drops support for those now-current operating systems, that means a OneDrive will likely stop working for millions of computers just as it doesn’t work now for the millions of Windows XP owners.

They have almost 45 million seats on O365 today and nearly 4.4 million home users of O365 with $2.5 billion in annual run rate.

A huge number of the sites have remarkably similar websites so I wonder if coincidence, plagiarism, or reselling is involved. I also found that Bitcasa has cash from Horizons Ventures which manages the Internet and technology investments of Mr. Li Ka-shing of Hong Kong and Andreessen-Horowitz.

Out of pure contrariness, I’d normally avoid Microsoft and Google, MS because they are so clouded .DOCX-centric and Google because they charge for message units and push the same “use our cloud-apps” schema.

It pains me to say this but I’m (almost) a Microsoft Live/Sky/OneDrive convert. The Microsoft cost-structure is attractive. The Microsoft consistency is attractive.

I won’t do it, though. The Microsoft ability to suddenly orphan my equipment isn’t attractive at all but it might work for you and it might work for some of my own clients.

I still don’t have a good answer. If you do, please share.

 

4 Years Ago I Couldn’t Even Spell Engineer and Now I Are One

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My granddaughter took a couple of online personality tests. One, she said, simply to determine what type of personality she has and the other to think a little bit about a career path.

She got engineer in the first.

She got engineer in the second.

Huh.

“The fact that Boppa is an engineer actually made me think about it,” she said.

On this day named for Laborers on which we do no Work, I’ll talk about engineering. And what I do for work.

I’ve had vocations or avocations in a dozen different fields. From the time my folks bought a little 21′ plywood cabin cruiser, I wanted to be a belly button designer; I spent my time in high school laying out boats. Lots of boats.

Stevens recruited me with their naval architecture program and access to the renowned Davidson Lab towing tank and marine research facility. Once I got there, I found out that naval architecture was a graduate program that taught us how to lay buildings on their sides and make them float.

I.Am.Not.A.Civil.Engineer. I’ve never, ever wanted be a civil engineer. Heck, I’m just barely civilized. And I certainly didn’t want to design floating bridges to carry bulk ore (although a floating skyscraper presents some intriguing hurdles).

I am an engineer but … I founded and chair a regional arts council with a popular summer music series.

I am an engineer but … I taught swimming so I could get out of gym class in college.

I am an engineer but … I made beer cans. Millions of them.

I am an engineer but … I competed in SCCA National races (the National runoffs are back in California next month for the first time since Riverside in 1968) and built a couple of race cars.

I am an engineer but … I’ve painted pictures with words and told stories with photographs for decades. I write a weekly newspaper column. And this blog. And other stuff. My photography and digital art hangs around the United States.

I am an engineer but … I taught for Vermont Colleges.

I am an engineer but … I’ve run boats up to 65′ long offshore and along the Intracoastal Waterway.

I am an engineer but … I managed a movie theater.

I am an engineer but … I’m a pretty good cook, despite the fact that Rufus thinks I dirty too many dishes.

There is almost no job that doesn’t benefit from an engineering degree. I know teachers and priests and lawyers and doctors, a ChemEng who has been the Tech guy-in-charge for decades for Great Performances and for the Metropolitan Opera, and a (former) president of a South America country all of whom were graduated from Stevens. One of my roommates there is an electrical contractor. One handled international patents for Bell Labs. The third was a spook.

Back to belly button design.

Engineering is a ball if the math and science excites you and, even more than that, if you just can’t pass some gadget without need not only to know how it works but also how to make it better.

Maybe it shouldn’t be “I am an engineer but …” Maybe it should be “Because I am an engineer …”

Because I am an engineer… I’ve invented a faucet and a table saw table and so much more.

Because I am an engineer… I designed and built the machines that make the batteries in the forklift that transports the Amazon package that showed up on your door. I designed and built a stacker that built great piles of Playboys and TVGuides and best selling novels.

Because I am an engineer… I designed and built a 30′ family sportboat with a catamaran hull. Belly button design at its finest.

Being an engineer isn’t labor. Because I am an engineer, I’m able to do art, and build and run boats, and make beer cans, and manage the movies, and race cars, and teach swimming and computers, and write, and photograph and paint, and more. Because I am an engineer, I have fun.

 

La La Liberals

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Thought for the Day
Some presidents have talked the talk and walked the walk.
Barack Obama talks the talk and walks the links.

This isn’t a comment on how many vacation days Mr. Obama (or any other President) takes. We know that all modern Presidential staffs are in constant contact with the mother ship no matter where POTUS himself happens to be.

This is a comment on how disconnected Mr. Obama is. He gives good speech. Kind of. With a teleprompter. But he sure isn’t much on follow through.

“If he walked on water,” my friend Lido Bruhl said, “you’d complain that he doesn’t get his feet wet. And that TelePrompTer canard is so 2008.”

Heh.

Here’s talking the talk. A (baker’s) dozen times.

Housing Meltdown:
Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners. Fail.

Jobs:
Notarized Campaign Promise• Create 1 million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016 and working to double American exports. Fail.
• Stand up for American workers and businesses by combating China’s trade practices. Fail.

Security:
• Develop a Cyber Security Strategy that ensures that we can identify our attackers and a way to respond. Can you spell Snowden? Fail.
• Close Guantanamo Bay. Fail.

Veterans:
• There were 400,000 claims pending within the Veterans Benefits Administration, and over 800,000 expected in 2008. Fail.
• Make the VA a leader of national health care reform. Fail.
• Create a veterans job corps. Fail.

Healthcare:
• Close the “doughnut hole” in Medicare. I still have one.
• Expand eligibility for Medicaid. Not in Florida or 23 other states.
• Move the U.S. health care system to standard electronic health records that providers can share. Not in Vermont or most other states.
• “Help up to 40 million, no 30 million, no 15 million, no 7 million, no 7 people get health insurance.”
• “If you like your plan…” Any other questions?

To be fair to my pal Lee, no politician keeps his campaign promises. In fact today, no politician even plans to keep her campaign promises.

To be more fair to my pal Lee, my rug-chewing friend Rufus had the same love affair with Glenn Beck as lefty loons have with Mr. Obama.

“What Beck does surely is news,” Rufus told me. “He has asked the questions I have been asking for months, and he has turned up some answers. I’ve never seen Beck make a statement without sources.

“Of course, I also like a six of Becks Premium light (64 cal /12 oz),” he said in that 2008 exchange.

That’s wrong, too. A 64 calorie slightly alcoholic soda pop isn’t beer.

The only purpose of a news show is to report the answers. Mr. Beck delivered perhaps five minutes of answers leavened with 18 minutes of advertising and 37 minutes of high volume rug chewing.

That ain’t news.

In fact, all that is is rousing the rabble.

Still the usual Liberal approach to
sing Lalalalalalalalala …
say the science is settled …
or point Oh, look! A squirrel!
and to scamper away does even less for a rational discussion than quoting Mr. Beck (or Keith Olbermann). All that is is rousing the rabble. Sound familiar?

Too many Liberals use the political scientific method: Have an idea and think it’s perfect. Find data that backs up the idea. Conclude it was a great idea and never needs changing.

We can do better.

We could apply the actual scientific method in government: Observe a problem and wonder about it. Do research and gather data. Have an idea. Experiment and gather more data to test the idea. Analyze that real data and draw a conclusion.

Oddly, that could even work on Facebook.